Labour manifesto: Capital gains tax hike to fund £83bn spending spree November 21, 2019 Jeremy Corbyn is planning a raid on the UK’s higher earners as part of plans to fund its commitment for nearly £83bn on day-to-day spending, the Labour manifesto revealed today. In what Corbyn dubbed a “radical” manifesto, launched in Birmingham today, he revealed that a Labour government would change how capital is taxed, bringing it [...]
DEBATE: Will more government subsidies help solve the childcare crisis for working parents? November 20, 2019 Will more government subsidies help solve the childcare crisis for working parents? Harini Iyengar, GLA candidate for the Women’s Equality Party, says YES. I am answering “yes” to this question — but I would first reframe it as greater government investment, not a subsidy. While childcare is traditionally framed as a cost, raising the next [...]
Laugh about the Lib Dems’ skills wallet all you like, but we’re all going to want one November 15, 2019 It is hard to think of a more unsexy name for a policy than the “skills wallet”. Juxtaposing two profoundly unexciting terms (as policy areas go, there’s nothing fun about skills, and “wallet” is the kind of word that starts to sound wrong if you say it in your head too many times), the Liberal [...]
What Thomas Cook’s collapse tells us about the power of disruption November 4, 2019 Whilst the failure of UK holiday firm Thomas Cook was sudden and a considerable shock to many, the writing has been on the wall for some time now. Driven by technology and specifically by the advent of online booking and reservation systems, the travel industry has long been undergoing a radical transformation across each of [...]
Over the last decade, central banks have gained huge influence over our lives November 4, 2019 Monetary policy, central bank independence, quantitative easing. These and many other subjects tend to make people’s eyes glaze over, and are best left to finance nerds to battle over in quiet corners. Yet central banks have, over the last decade, emerged from the shadows of arcane macroeconomic policy discussions to become fundamental to all our [...]
Syria is the climax in the long battle over the soul of American foreign policy October 28, 2019 In defying the American foreign policy establishment, I once wrote a book that cost me my job. In 2006, in response to the looming debacle in Iraq, the British thinker Anatol Lieven and I wrote Ethical Realism. It was a broadside castigating the brain-dead, pro-interventionist intellectual sameness of the US foreign policy establishment, and the [...]
Londoners need homes – and a full review of green belt land October 8, 2019 Building more homes is not just common sense, but good business sense too. London needs more homes to keep talent here and to maintain social cohesion and diverse communities. This is not a controversial view. Londoners know that we are in the grip of a housing crisis: a YouGov survey commissioned by London First and [...]
The modular model: Can factory-built homes solve the housing crisis? September 26, 2019 picture a vast warehouse somewhere in the north of England. Workers in hard hats are poring over intricate plans against a background of humming machinery. Robot arms slice through sheets of metal and wood as they pass by on a conveyor belt, precisely cutting out shapes that look like huge versions of Airfix models. Across [...]
Medical cannabis could nip Britain’s growing opioid crisis in the bud September 20, 2019 The United States is suffering from an epidemic that is estimated to have claimed 400,000 lives. In what is now known as the opioid crisis, drug manufacturers have been raking in huge profits over the past two decades by mass prescribing a diverse class of addictive painkillers known as opioids. Now, about 130 people in [...]
Fintech is all the rage, but is the bubble about to burst? September 5, 2019 Fintechs are all the rage. Scarcely a day goes by without a new challenger bank or money app making headlines about how it seeks to disrupt traditional banking and solve personal finance problems. As a result, capital is pouring into the sector – last year, global investment into financial technology ventures more than doubled to [...]